Strange justice: Protection comes after destruction
Herald reporter VIBHA VERMA travels to the coastal village of Velsao after the new CRZ notification to discover that for many who have lost their stuctures, the damage has already been done
VELSAO, JAN 9
Pleasure and pain are strange bedfellows. In the coastal village of Velsao, on the edge of Mormugao on one hand and the taluka of Salcete on the other, 32-year old Domingo Goes is struggling to come to terms with this strange piece of justice. The draft Coastal Zone Regulation (CRZ) notification 2011, allows for structures of traditional coastal dwellers to be protected. For Goes, though the Government axe had already fallen. Following the High Court order directing that all structures built post February 19, 1991, all Goes has is a demolished shed where he used to keep his fishing equipment and a house partly “trimmed” by 15 square metres, in 2009.
Sure, Goes did not have all the paper work to protect his dwelling or his family. He felt that his traditional structures would never be touched. In his coastal village, where life still revolves around fish and toddy, documentation doesn’t quite go with the terrain. Trust does.
Goes fortunately had electricity and water bills to prove that his main house existed in 1978. “That spared me from being houseless. The Panchayat never educated us on these issues. If we were not to connect electricity, we would not have known that our houses need registration”, he said.
Goes isn’t alone. 200 other structures in his village were similarly razed as a debate raged on protecting traditional fisherfolk. Many people saw their ancestral huts being pulled down by Government machinery since they did not have adequate proof, that their homes were built before the all important February 19, 1991, cut off date. Some lost structures built in the 1930’s.
They sat and watched. Any resistance meant one response. Jail
“They asked me for a proof to state that the shed existed before 1991. How can I convince them that even my dad was born in this shed and it was constructed before 1930s?” questioned 43-year-old Jose Maria Dias.
“People here are uneducated. They never thought that their ancestral sheds where they kept their belongings and fishing equipment would ever be targeted. Hence they did not register them. Some didn’t register their homes”, Agnelo Rodrigues, President, Goencho Raponkarancho Ekvott, reacts.
So when the bulldozers moved in, the villagers of Velsao got a rude reality check. For these simple folk who live by the tides, the ebb and flow of the sea is life. The sea god is their employer giving families ten to twenty thousand rupees – a little more and sometimes a little less. And everyone pitches in. For instance, all the four sons of Maria Dias are fishermen
While they faced the bulldozers, they saw big companies getting permissions.
“A multi-national company has already begun process to set up its guest house in this village. With these structures obstructing the traditional pathways, the fishermen will have to take a huge round to return with the fish fetched for the day”, said Agnelo Rodriuges, who lost a portion of his ancestral house as he couldn’t produce documents.
Rodrigues says that the CRZ 2011 will bring relief but it will be time consuming. “There is a benefit but at the same time, there are losses also. Local Government has no power. The Centre’s permission will be required if we have to reconstruct or renovate our houses”, he said.
The villagers have decided on a meeting to study the fresh notification after its convener and Chairman of the National Fishworkers Forum Mathany Saldanha gets it from Delhi on January 11.
As an element of uncertainty still persists, the fisherfolk and toddy tappers of Velsao, hold on to the only thing they are sure of — the embrace of the vast ocean.
